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Child Support: Is $50,000 a Month Enough?

13Apr

*Disclaimer The views expressed in this article does not necessarily reflect the beliefs and values of answersfrommen.com. Our feminist readers may be offended by some thoughts. Be advised.

If a woman sleeps with a man and gets paid $200 for the tryst, then she is a prostitute, and is subjected to many different offensive names like whore or slut. But, if the same woman sleeps with a man and gets pregnant, why does she suddenly become a fit mother, and get $50,000? Male celebrities do not need anyone to take up on their behalf, especially young, immature ones, but something needs to said about this growing trend of “baby mamas”.

First and foremost, any man that does not want to become a parent prematurely with a person that they do not know or do not love, should protect themselves with some sort of contraception. There are too many things that you can contract from a few minutes of fun that you can not get rid of, including but not limited to curable diseases, incurable diseases, life-threatening diseases, and babies. Men need to be more responsible about protecting themselves. There is a reality television show, Basketball Wives, dedicated to the everyday lives of the mothers of NBA players’ children (The irony of the show is that only a few of the “Basketball Wives” have ever been married). With a small amount of pro-activeness, famous men could keep themselves from being diseased or exploited.

However, this rant is not about the idiocy of men around an attractive and “available” woman. This rant is about how completely unequal the law is when discerning the fate a single man. Once a woman gets pregnant, the rights of a man in regards to that unborn child vanish. He has no say in whether the baby will be aborted or not or how much financial responsibility he has. Granted, women carry and nourish the child while going through various physical and hormonal changes. The toll on their bodies during pregnancy is substantial and the birthing process is nothing short of a miracle, but once one egg is fertilized from an act that two people consensually participated in, one partner loses all power. Men get the short end of the stick. If a woman wants to abort the fetus and her partner wants to keep the baby, then the man has to sit idly by and watch as their child is taken from him. His child’s life is stopped and there is nothing he can do to change it. And if the woman wants to keep her child and her partner does not, then he has to become father and concede up to 40% of his check for the next 18 years of his life. This bears repeating. One twenty minute act (the average length of sexual intercourse) can cost men 2/5 of their income for the next eighteen years or the life of their unborn child.

As a people, we should be big proponents of thinking through our actions and contemplating the consequences that they cause, but also of equal liberties and responsibility. If a man and a woman in a relationship have sex and decide to raise a child together, then even after a break-up, the man should be financially and emotionally responsible for the child. As a couple, they decided to raise a family, so there is fair causation and equally fair consequence, so he should take care of his offspring. When a pregnancy is accidental, then both the man and the woman should have equal input into the situation, because it affects both of them. As the bylaws are written, a woman that carries a man’s child today holds not only her baby’s life, but also the life of her partner in her hands. She dictates how the rest of his life plays out. She decides if he will be father or not. She decides how present he can be in raising the child. She controls a large chunk of his finances too. Unfortunately, many women readily exploit this situation and the law and trap men with child support. Women get pregnant purposefully with a man whom they have no future, then file for exorbitant child support with the state. These women should be given nothing. Bow Wow, a rapper and actor, recently had a child with a woman with whom he is not in a relationship, and is now paying $50,000 every month in child support to her. Celebrities have more means to give to their children, but what kid needs that much money to be supported? $50,000 is about what the average American makes in gross income in a year. Over the course of the 18 years of her child’s life, this woman whose claim to fame is sleeping with a celebrity, will have access to $10,800,000. That is pure insanity. What job did she have before she spread her legs with Bow Wow? Where is the equality in this situation? Laws are put in place to protect the well-being of children, but they ignore the rights of men altogether, and aid women with hidden agendas. Furthermore, men that do not want to be exploited by excessive child support are not allowed full custody of children unless they can prove that the mother is unfit, even if they themselves can raise the standard of living for the child considerably. The law would rather allow a woman to sponge off a twenty minute act with a celebrity and live as a millionaire, than to put a child in their father’s care. Until they are fully capable of making the decision themselves, children live with their mother. This is unfair to upstanding fathers and needs to be changed.

Something needs to be done about women that reap the benefits of being impregnated by wealthy men. Two people made a decision to have sex, two people performed the necessary actions to become pregnant, but only one person holds any authority of the outcome of the pregnancy. Whether it be a change in the rules that govern child support, or a change in the culture of the people that use it, child support can not continue on this path without negatively affecting our society and eventually the children that it is supposed to aid.